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Saturday, May 22, 2010

Seven too many

The time we knew would come eventually arrived sooner than we thought: On Wednesday night, the husband came rushing into our room after taking Toddler J to play with the youth at church, as he does every Wednesday now. This was unusual since usually they go right in to the bath since they get home a little after J's normal bedtime. The husband carried J right past me into the bathroom, saying "everything's fine," which was my clue that, in fact, everything was NOT fine.

Turns out, J had walked onto the basketball court just as someone took his shot and then, during the scramble to get the rebound, said someone knocked J over onto the floor, which he hit hard with his chin, splitting it wide open. It just so happened that this someone was also a doctor (he was most apologetic), and he and the husband surveyed the damage and decided what was called for were some butterfly closures, which is what the husband was scrounging for in our bathroom. I, on the other hand, took one look at the quite deep cut and thought about A, struggling to put butterflies on an equally struggling toddler for a week; B, the bloody mess sure to follow after the butterflies inevitably came off at night if not more often; and C, unsightly scarring that was sure to ensue. At which point, I preempted the butterflies and sent them off to the pediatric emergency room.

They left at 8:30pm. They got back home close to 3:00am. It was a long stay that ended with seven stitches delivered under conscious sedation. In between, they watched Curious George and Thomas the Train and came home with some new board books and Crayola shaped band-aids. I'm sure the husband will share the harrowing details in an upcoming post, but J is fine now. He assured me from his drug-induced haze when he got home that "Nothing hurt," even though the evidence of three attempts to put in an IV in both hands and an arm led me to believe otherwise. Hopefully, the amenesiac effects of the drugs wiped away all the bad memories of the night, while Clorox got most of the blood out of his shirt.

Sure. It was only a matter of time. But two is so young for scars and scares this big!